Thursday, April 23, 2009

Author AJ “Sandy” Mackinnon is the kind of person who has adventures. Not jumping-off-a-cliff extreme sport type adventures but proper, old-fashioned adventures.

When he was nineteen, he decided to travel to Iona, a tiny isle lying off the west coast of Mull, which in turn lies off the west coast of Scotland. He went in search of the Well of Eternal Youth.At age thirty-five, Sandy decided to leave his job as a teacher in England and row his dinghy down the River Severn. He ended up still rowing, in Romania, a year later. Along the way he crossed the English Channel; was arrested by the River Police; tear-gassed in the Budapest Metro; trapped without funds in Serbia under threat of bombardment; and captured by Balkan river pirates.

Currently Sandy is a teacher at Geelong Grammar’s Timbertop campus. His interests include conjuring and home-made fireworks.

Here’s a great clip of Sandy talking about his life and book, if you want to know more. (His book, by the way, is The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow.)

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Head over to the Black Inc. website to download the submission guidelines for the Best Australian Stories 2009, Best Australian Essays 2009 and Best Australian Poems 2009. (The link to the pdf is in the news section at the top of our homepage, if you’re lost.)

All three anthologies accept unsolicited, previously unpublished work. The deadline is 1 August 2009.

We’ve got two new editors this year – Robyn Davidson will be selecting the pieces for Best Australian Essays 2009 and Robert Adamson will be selecting the poems for Best Australian Poems 2009. Delia Falconer will be editing Best Australian Stories for her second year.

Friday, April 17, 2009

English novelist, poet, critic and editor Ford Madox Ford once said "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."We’ve applied this test to our new crime fiction release The Shanghai Murders by David Rotenberg. Here’s page 99 (the main character Detective Zhong Fong and his colleagues are at a gruesome crime scene in an alleyway in Shanghai):

Over and over again, Fong was approached with“What are you looking for?” And over and over again,he said, “I’ll know when I see it.” So they brought himeverything they found. A small handful of one-fen coins,half a well-leafed-through Hong Kong porno magazine,bits of several different kinds of food in various degreesof decay, a sole from the toe of a lady’s shoe, and manymore things—none of which pleased Fong. He hadalready found the piece of heart and the strip from theJAL airsickness bag, where he thought they would be.The Chinese driver informed the police that his Zairiancharge never carried a wallet, that he, the driver, alwayswent in after his client was finished and paid the bills.So that accounted for the wallet’s whereabouts.As the driver headed downtown with a police officerto make a full statement, Wang Jun approached Fong.“One hand points to the guy’s ID.”“The other to the second part of the message,” repliedFong.“Which is?” asked Wang Jun.“Which is what we are looking for. No! What we’llkeep looking for until we find.”Wang Jun slipped a cigarette into his mouth. “Didyou notice that the body pieces weren’t put togethervery well this time?”“I noticed that.”“Could it be that our guy is slipping? Maybe he madea mistake.”“Perhaps.”